Piye kabare? Happy Birthday ya.... Semoga nyaman dan sukses selalu di negara orang. I am writing here on behalf of my friend (whom I cc in this email). We experienced a shameful incident in Batam's immigration last weekend. We would like to seek your help for the possibility to expose this incident in Batam's local newspaper "Tribun batam'. I know that you are not in Indonesia right now, but I hope you can find the way to forward this to someone in Tribun Batam to publish it as 'Surat Pembaca'.

Below is the letter that my friend has sent to Indonesian Embassy in Singapore. I have translate it into Bahasa as I attached in this email. We hope that this could be publish so people are aware that such practice is still happening in Indonesian immigration. If by any circumstance, this could not be publish, we really can understand. well, at least we tried our best, so this thing will not happen again in the future.

Thank you so much, Yon.... by the way, I really hope to meet you again sometime. I will be in Singapore, at least, until July next year, so please, contact me at anytime, if you come to Singapore by any chance.

SUB: Harassment of tourists by the Immigration officials at Batam International Ferry Terminal

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Incident Report:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Details:Name: Bharath KalyanNationality: IndianPassport No: Z022094Date: 19-Sept-2009Time: 0900 Hours (Indonesia time)Location: Immigration counter, Batam Center International Ferry terminal----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I arrived at the Batam international ferry terminal with a friend of mine from Singapore for a short 3 day holiday.I was denied an entry into the country by the immigration officials stating that I had less than 3 months on my Singapore employment pass. According to them, I need to have more than 3 months validity on my employment pass, which I know by any country's entry regulation is completely untrue. I even showed them a letter which was from Ministry of Manpower, Singapore, stating my extension of employment pass. When I confronted the officials to show me a regulation stating this, or to meet their superiors, I was denied of any opportunity. Instead I was threatened of being denied a visa unless I co-opeate with them and agree to pay an amount of SGD 50 to them. After a long heated argument with these corrupt officials at the immigration I was given a visa after paying an extra bribe of SGD 20, apart from the usual on-arrival visa fee of USD 10.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had to heed into this corrupt practices, as I did not want to spoil the holiday for a friend of mine who had already cleared the immigration and looked extremely tense by then. It is exactly this weakness which is exploited incessantly by these corrupt officials. Even though, I personally feel extremely guilty for giving into these corrupt practices, I think as a responsible human being, I think it is essential to expose such practices, so as to find an amicable solution to such a menace. This is with a hope some action would be taken to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.

From a short chat (by my friend who happens to be an Indonesian citizen) with the security agencies at Batam, I also understood this kind of treatment is frequently meted out at the Indian tourists at Batam international ferry terminal. I'm not aware of the exact reasons for this kind of nationalistic bias, however, I noticed a similar treatment meted to a couple of more tourists, who happened to be Indian citizens.

With this email, I just hope at least some concrete steps are taken by the Immigration authorities to prevent such untoward incidents from happening in the future and tourists visiting Indonesia getting a bad impression of such a beautiful country filled with extremely friendly people.

ps: To create further awareness, I've already sent a Bahasa translated version of this incident report to a journalist friend of mine working with 'Tribun Batam' for publication on reader's grievances.